After generations of being the exclusive domain of wealthy families, successful businessmen and professionals, luxury vehicles went mainstream in the mid-1990s. Between 1997 and 2006, luxury brand sales grew 82 percent.

Detroit's Big Three missed the party.

A Plain Dealer analysis of data from credit research firm Experian Group shows that domestic luxury brands failed to keep up with their Japanese and German counterparts.

Once-successful, near-luxury brands such as Mercury, Buick and Oldsmobile all but disappeared.

Toyota's Lexus division more than tripled its sales, while Ford's Lincoln brand fell by 27 percent. General Motors' Cadillac brand spent billions to increase sales and stay competitive but still lost share to BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Acura.

A booming economy and fierce competition drove some of the growth. Also, Baby Boomers hit their peak earning years, making them prime luxury car candidates.

German and Japanese companies seized on those trends. By expanding the definition of what a luxury car could be and lowering prices, they expanded the market and grew quickly.

Domestic luxury brands, on the other hand, had to fight reputations for making geriatric land yachts.

Generations of Americans that considered Cadillac to be the pinnacle of automotive excellence were replaced by people who didn't want to buy their parents' cars.

"You can blame some of that on short sightedness for the domestics," Ford sales analyst George Pipas said. "But there are a lot of issues involved."

Rise of the Baby Boomers

Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with Global Insight in suburban Boston, said Cadillacs and Lincolns were the choices of Depression era buyers. Boomers wanted Lexus and BMW models.

"We have almost 20 years of generational data showing that exact trend," Lindland said.

This year, GM began selling three nearly identical crossover vehicles - the GMC Acadia, the Saturn Outlook and the Buick Enclave. Despite that the vehicles are similarly priced and are almost identical mechanically, the GMC model is outselling the two others combined.

"People have a tough time paying more than $30,000 for a Saturn, and the Buick brand is damaged," Lindland said.

For the typical luxury buyer over the past 10 years, the Lexus' reputation for reliability and BMW's exotic cache were more alluring than the nostalgia of buying into America's oldest car brands, she said.

Analysts disagree on how important those generational ties are. Lackluster products, not aging buyers, cost Lincoln and Cadillac, they said.

"If you make great cars, people will buy them," said Jim Hossack, an analyst with consulting firm AutoPacific in Tustin, Calif. "People buy Mustangs even though their fathers and grandfathers bought them. It's a great car."

It wasn't just a reputation for building geriatric vehicles that hampered Buick, he said. It was the fact that the company made geriatric vehicles at all.

Lexus hit the luxury market like a tsunami in the late 1990s, sweeping away competitors in a rapid rise to dominance.

"Beginning in 1995 and continuing through the dot-com crash in 2000, there was an incredible buildup in wealth," Ford's Pipas said. "They could have foreseen Boomers in peak earning years, but they couldn't possibly have foreseen the explosion in wealth."

Before Lexus so radically changed the market, U.S. luxury vehicles were all fairly similar - large cars with big engines and cushy seats.

In 1998, the company released the RX 300, its first luxury crossover vehicle. Tom Libby, an analyst with J.D. Power & Associates, said it offered the ride and handling of a car with the size and interior space of a sport utility vehicle.

"Everybody has their own luxury crossover now, but nobody's caught the RX," Libby said.

In 1997, Lexus came in sixth behind Cadillac, Lincoln, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and even Honda's Acura line. By 2001, it was the leading luxury brand. Last year, it led the luxury market by a wide margin, selling about 51,000 more models than Mercedes, its closest competitor.

"They gave Boomers exactly what they wanted at exactly the right time," Lindland said.

GM reinvents Cadillac

While less successful than Lexus, GM did not sit by and let its luxury brand disappear. Analysts say the company spent billions to drastically improve quality and rework the brand's entire lineup.

In 2002, the company released its CTS sedan. After failing several times to introduce a mid-sized luxury car, GM had a hit.

"That was the first time they had a competitive product in that segment," Libby said. GM plans to launch a redesigned CTS next month, and early previews of the vehicle are flattering.

The lessons learned from Cadillac were promising. GM proved it can change what people think about a brand. On the other hand, reinvention is expensive, and analysts are not sure that Ford will be able to follow GM's success.

"Cadillac spent billions of dollars coming back," Lindland said. "Lincoln is trying to do the same by spending hundreds of millions of dollars."

End of the line?

And it's not entirely clear that Ford should be trying any harder at this point.

After a huge increase in luxury sales between 1997 and 2004, sales slowed significantly in 2005. Since then, luxury sales have grown at less than 2 percent per year.

J.D. Power research shows that companies are subsidizing low-interest leases to move more luxury cars and trucks.

During the third quarter of this year, companies on average spent about $3,500 per vehicle on luxury car incentives while spending less than $2,500 on mass-market vehicles. Two years ago, those figures were reversed.

Still, Libby believes the luxury market will grow. In response to the popularity of BMW's small-car 3-series, several luxury producers are rushing compact models to showrooms.

GM plans to take part in that, with analysts expecting a compact crossover to come out of its Lordstown complex by 2011.

Pipas said Ford is still expecting luxury vehicles to outperform the mainstream market as a whole, but the company expects small cars and crossovers to grow faster.

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